Though one of the Ten Commandments warns against trying to create God in one's own image, many people ancient and contemporary have been doing that very thing with disastrous results. Part 1
The MAGAt "god" is the worst effort ever. Literally, ever.
No ancient culture known to me ever began its ponderings about divinity from a monotheistic perspective. Polytheism prevailed; and still before monotheism popped up as a possibility in Egypt (Ra, the sun god) and quite a bit later in Israel (Yahweh), there were periods of henotheism—the belief in the supremacy of one deity without denying the existence of others.
The Aten, the sun disk, a visible representation of the god Ra
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In Israel, it seems to me, from the get-go, its deities were personified though not yet “humanized.” Nearly impossible to separate the god of creation from nature, but enough so that communication was practiced and expectations of people by the nature god suspected or imagined.
In Israel, again, as the creator god was envisioned, he—and I don’t know of presumed divine figures who were dominant and female emerging for awhile—was considered powerful in every respect, the control of nature being just one area of power. So, inevitably I believe, a deity presumed to be mighty was given characteristics of the most powerful humans the average person encountered or heard about. First, probably, was a tribal chieftan like predecessors to Nahshon.
Nahshon
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As awareness of the wider world and interactions with the most powerful leaders in other nations came about these influenced god-concepts. An example might well have been Pharaoh Thutmose II who could have been the benevolent power person initially welcoming the Hebrews into Egypt or the tyrannical power guy driving the Hebrews out of Egypt before changing his mind.
Pharaoh Thutmose II
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Thankfully, we’ve become astoundingly more sophisticated theologically.
Seriously though folks…
Part 2 of 2 coming up with some distorted sometimes dangerous examples of false images of God widely embraced today.